This section provides information helpful in understanding the invention but that is not necessarily prior art.
Articles formed from cured elastomers may have excellent physical properties, such as stability, durability, flexibility, elasticity, and resilience. For example, a core of a golf ball may be formed from a cured elastomer and may be configured to provide the golf ball with specific characteristics, such as compression, spin, velocity, and resilience. As such, golf balls including cores formed from cured elastomers may be optimized for various playing abilities and conditions. One limitation of crosslinked rubbers and other thermoset materials is that they cannot be easily recycled. Scrap thermoset materials generated during production that cannot be recycled increase manufacturing costs. Further, it is desirable that a product be recyclable after the end of its useful life.
Dynamically vulcanized or dynamically crosslinked thermoplastic compositions have been made by melt mixing a thermoplastic resin (e.g., polyethylene or polypropylene) and a rubber, then curing the rubber while mixing to produce dispersed crosslinked rubber domains in a matrix of the thermoplastic resin. The materials that can be made via dynamic crosslinking have been somewhat limited, however, by the ready transference of some components between the rubber and thermoplastic phases during melt mixing.